Netflix subscribers are getting another shelf of things to scroll past, or possibly watch. The company says that, starting Aug. 3, its service will carry video from dozens of digital media brands, including BuzzFeed, Condé Nast, Hearst Magazines, People Inc. and Tastemade.
The arrangement brings Netflix a batch of publisher-made videos that, according to TechCrunch, includes both licensed older material and new continuing series. These are the kinds of shows that have generally lived on YouTube and other web video platforms, rather than inside a paid streaming catalog.
Netflix described the pitch as giving subscribers a way to watch videos “from around the Internet without having to leave Netflix.” That is a tidy bit of platform logic: if people are going to watch celebrity interviews, home tours, food videos and travel clips anyway, Netflix would prefer the next click to happen inside its own app.
What is joining the catalog
The announced brands include titles and publishers with very different audiences. Netflix named BuzzFeed, Condé Nast, Hearst Magazines, People Inc. and Tastemade as part of the first wave. Examples cited in the announcement include Architectural Digest’s “Open Door” and Vanity Fair’s “Lie Detector Test.”
The videos will run roughly three to 20 minutes, according to Netflix. The company says the programming will cover areas including food, travel, fashion, entertainment, design and wellness. That range is broad enough to mean almost anything, which is usually how streaming menu categories are born.
Netflix also says more digital publishers and partners could be added later. The company has not presented this as a replacement for its scripted shows, films, stand-up specials or reality programming. It is an additional layer of relatively short videos from media brands that already know how to produce for the algorithmic internet.
Why Netflix wants web video
The timing is not random. Bloomberg reported earlier this week that some Netflix shows have suffered steep audience drops between their first and second seasons, with certain titles losing as much as 70 percent of their season-one audience. That report does not establish why Netflix made this publisher deal, but it does frame the problem streaming services keep running into: keeping viewers around after the big new thing is no longer new.
Shorter videos give Netflix another kind of inventory. A 10-minute home tour or food segment does not ask for the same commitment as a serialized drama with a two-year production gap. It also gives publishers another distribution channel at a moment when dependence on YouTube, social platforms and search traffic remains a recurring headache for digital media companies.
The open question is how Netflix will present this material to subscribers. A streaming service can license all the internet video it wants, but discovery is the actual product. If these clips are buried under the usual piles of prestige dramas, dating shows and true-crime thumbnails, the deal becomes less a reinvention of streaming and more another row in the interface.
This story draws on original reporting from The Verge.
